Cypriot 'Al Capone' suspected of stealing president's body

A notorious Cypriot villain, known as "Al Capone", is suspected of
ordering the theft of the corpse of the former president Tassos
Papadopoulos.

Police in Cyprus conduct an investigation at a graveside 9 March 2010 after discovering the stolen corpse of former President Tassos Papadopoulos, which was snatched from his grave in December 2009Photo: EPA

Tabitha Morgan in Nicosia

5:21PM GMT 12 Mar 2010

Antonis Kitas is suspected of giving the order to snatch the body from his prison cell and had hoped to use it as a bargaining tool to secure his release.

Police are questioning Kitas, who is serving a double life sentence in Nicosia prison for multiple rape and murder, about the theft.

Mr Papadopoulos's body was stolen from its grave in a Nicosia cemetery last December, the day before the first anniversary of his death.

In pouring rain, thieves lifted a 650lb granite tomb stone and removed the corpse from the coffin.

Police initially believed the theft was politically motivated because the former president was an uncompromising nationalist with many enemies.

Suggestions were also made that criminals were seeking to extort money from the Papadopoulos family for the return of the body.

However, information from a retired prison official led police to investigate whether the mastermind might be the gangland boss, Kitas.

Panikos Kyriacou, a former prison governor, said he remembered a convict on a life sentence some years earlier discussing a plan to steal the body of another former president as a means to securing his release from prison.

A tip-off earlier this week led police to search a Nicosia cemetery close to the one where Mr Papadopoulos had originally been laid to rest. There, they found the missing body. The tip was said to have come from one of the accomplices who named "Al Capone" and his brother as the ringleaders.

According to former inmates, Kitas enjoys a lifestyle of comparative luxury behind bars, financed by his criminal empire, which he continues to control.

Kitas escaped from custody, briefly, two years ago, giving his guards the slip while being treated for a minor illness at a private Nicosia clinic.

During his six-month stay in the clinic, despite the presence of prison guards, Kitas was frequently joined for the night by his Chinese wife, and had access to a laptop computer and several mobile phones.

A prison guard said Kitas was never handcuffed during his stay in the clinic, and warders were told not to complain about the lax security. "As ever," a retired prison official said: "Al Capone was a law unto himself."

Kitas, his brother, Mamas, and two other men have been remanded to appear in court in Nicosia on 18 March.